Joomla Speaks out on its 10th Birthday

This August I turned 10. That's very young you might say. Sure in human terms of that's pretty young..not even into teens yet. But in software terms..for that's what I am, being 10 is not necessarily that. I am not sure what it is in fact...But I am said to be more or less mature now. But then I have been stable and mature many a times in my life cycle so far...I am a foster child and I have been cared for by hundreds if not thousands of parents and each of them have put a bit of themselves in me. As you might imagine I have grown to have multifaceted personality. For some people I am a simple website building tool, for some a flexible content management system while some see me as a platform to build web applications on. And that's just some of the ways in which people tend to perceive me. Read my complete story!

As luck, fate of chance would have it most of my foster parents must have been more of software geeks,developers and engineers for its said that my innards have been built on some solid software engineering concepts and have a great architecture.

I guess a lot more of my parents are developers than design and UX experts. This has meant that I am not as good to look at as i could potentially be and don't have what they call 'great usability'. So if you are UI/UX expert and want to create the next great thing in UX. I’m available and I need some love. Come and join our awesome family and make the new me !

The biggest asset that I have is you awesome people, my family, my community - the people who made me and use me. All my family loves me passionately and sometimes fiercely ! And the passion sometimes leads to conflict.

I’m just a piece of software you guys created but you guys are so much more than that. But at the same time, i play a large role in keeping you all together. So lets all work to make me better.. What say ?

You are human beings and good, great human beings. Can you all, as a celebration of my 10th birthday make a resolution ? To not fight and quibble over silly things, keep those ugly hairy things called Egos aside and join hands more to help change the world ?

Let's make contributing fun again and get the thrill of excitement that can only come out of creating something and contributing to opensource !

10 Years.. Its been fun and Inspiring !

Let me come to something I'm proud about. I'm just hitting 10 and I'm more or less directly responsible for the birth of an entire industry.

Template clubs, theme developers and freelancers who have created and awesome wardrobe for me to dress up for every occasion. Extension developers who have made available such a grand array of accessories that it's possible to extend me to do practically anything on the web today. In some way all these extensions are like children to me and I believe their success is my success too!

However a word of caution for all my children. Like your success is my success - the opposite holds true as well. You all have a huge footprint today on the web.

How you behave, communicate with your custommers as well as the quality that you maintain in your products are directly perceived as my qualities.

So you need to be careful that you create the best products out there, offer the best quality and support. As they say in Hindi.. 'Baccho mera nam roshan karo' (Children, Make me Proud) .

Your brand is my brand and my brand is yours. And all of us affect each other. So lets all together as a whole Change the world !

It's been an awesome 10 years full of excitement, awesome events and connecting with new people and lives. What comes next you may ask ? Well I’m not sure. I need to evolve obviously to survive. I don’t want to become the dinosaur of the web. I am pretty sure that the community that's evolved me so far will continue to do so.

So when's Joomla 4 coming? I guess It's just a matter of time before you guys get down to it. The only request I would make is that as you all speed up to embrace the latest cutting edge technologies, do take care that you don't leave our loyal users behind and also take their needs into consideration. After all, I am because they are!

Author's Note

This style of writing is remniscent of my school days where we were asked to write imaginary 'Autobiographies' of inanimate objects. I remember how I used to get so involved in the life of a book or a plastic ball while penning down their life stories with their high's & lows.

Joomla for me has been so much more than that and somehow it felt apt that I try and imagine what Joomla might want to say to all of us on its 10th Birthday and put it down in an article!

The article is on purpose written with a childlike innocence. But a lot of dreams need us to be a bit mad and follow them with conviction and innocence that only childhood can give !

Parth is currently serving on the Joomla Marketing Leadership team as the Strategic Marketing Manager & will help formulate Joomla's marketing strategy among other things.

Parth will collaborate on development and short and long term marketing strategies for Joomla. He will also collaborate with new Joomla development, Planning, and Market Research.

Parth is the co founder & CEO of Techjoomla & Tekdi Technologies where Joomla is one of the main focus areas. Techjoomla is behind several popular Joomla products & is heavily involved in Joomla based development.

Involved with Joomla since the Mambo days, Parth is an avid open source evangelist & is one of the founders of the Joomla working group in Pune & Joomla Day India. He is a regular speaker at Joomla events worldwide & loves to foster open source adoption & collaboration.

When not in the office, you will find Parth in the mountains hiking or cycling, reading a book , tinkering with electronics & computers, cooking or gardening.